TA65 telomerase activation paper summary

I recently just read a paper about this TA-65 compound sold by TA Sciences which activates telomerase and may improve healthspan and possibly lifespan. The title of the paper was "The telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult old mice without increasing cancer incidence". I think it's pretty interesting stuff. Here are some of the main points I gleaned from the paper:

-Diseases characterized by premature loss of tissue renewal and premature death due to linked germline mutations in Tert and Terc genes, which results in decreased telomerase activity and accelerated telomere shortening:
Dyskeratosis congenital
Aplastic anemia
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
-Telomerase is preferentially recruited to shortest telomeres
-TRAP assay: telomere repeat amplification protocol assay
-40% lifespan increase: enhanced telomerase activity in mice overexpressing TERT is able to delay aging and extent the median lifespan by 40%, when combined with increased cancer resistance (from the germline)
-enforced telomerase expression in old mice also leads to a significant extension of both mean and maximum lifespan
-re-expression of TERT in mice that were already aged because of TERT deficiency can rescue telomere length, and delay aging in these mice (Jaselioff et al. 2010)
-TA-65 compound significantly increases telomerase activity, but the effect is lost quickly
-critically short telomeres (for mice): <8 kb
-TA-65 increased healthspan but not lifespan of female mice (mice only took TA-65 for 4 months)
-mice with TA-65 had improvements in many categories: red blood cell count, metabolic fitness, insulin levels, lipids in liver, subcutaneous fat, thickness of epidermal layer, wound closure rate, hair regrowth, DNA fragmentation, and bone mineral density
-no increased cancer rates overall. However, the TA-65 mice had less of certain types of cancer and more of others. Decreased sarcomas (connective tissue cancer), but increased lymphomas (white blood cell cancer). Also there was an increase in liver cancer, but it was not statistically significant
-TA-65 has greatest effect on liver cells (>10 fold overexpression of telomerase)
-TAT2 is a similar molecule to TA-65
-increase in mTERT mRNA levels is accompanied by increased c-Myc (transcription factor which regulates 15% of all genes; regulates chromatin structure; mutation of myc found in many cancers) and JunB (transcription factor involved in primary growth factor response) mRNA levels
-TA-65 most likely interacts with MAPK pathway (regulates various cellular activities, such as gene expression, mitosis, differentiation, proliferation, and cell survival/apoptosis.)
-TERT appears to activate Wnt pathway (plays a role in embryonic development, cell differentiation, and cell polarity generation)
-TA-65 isolated from a proprietary extract of the dried root of Astragalus membranaceus
-main author Maria Blasco acts as consultant and holds stock in Life Length, S.L., a biotechnology company based on measuring telomeres as an indication of health status and biological age of samples
-author Calvin Harley is one of the main inventors of TA-65. He consults for TA Sciences and is personally taking TA-65. He is also President of Telome Health Inc.

Here's a scan of the paper with my annotations:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B55PHkbittziYTIxZDBlMTYtZDEwOC00NDUzLTllN2YtNmRiMDYwMjQ3M2Iy&hl=en